Covid turbulence grounds dreams of aspiring pilots

Aarif Iqbal, 28, spends his days teaching budding pilots the theory of aircraft navigation. At night, he works as a call-centre executive.Iqbal’s sights, though, are set skywards. The Delhi resident completed his commercial pilot licence (CPL) two years ago, but was unable to find a job as a pilot due to the economic downturn in 2019, and the Covid-19 pandemic the next year.Hundreds of pilots in the country are staring at a long wait to get the job of their dreams, and many like Iqbal are pursuing other alternatives to maintain an income or supplement their skills. According to industry estimates, around 600-800 CPLs are issued in India every year, some to pilots who have been trained abroad. But hiring has been virtually non-existent since the pandemic grounded Indian airlines last year. Industry estimates put the total number of pilots employed in India at around 10,000. 84309228Prior to 2019, the growth of the sector ensured that these pilots found job opportunities. For instance, between July 2018 and March 2019, numbers from Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) show that aircraft in use by scheduled operators rose from 620 to 691. With an estimated 8-12 pilots needed to operate a narrow-body aircraft, and 18-20 needed for a wide-body, that puts the number of new jobs at around 800, since most of these additions are narrow-body aircraft. According to air-force veteran and aviation expert Dinesh Nair, this was a period when not only did pilots have opportunities with Indian airlines, Middle-eastern airlines too became an attractive destination for Indian pilots.In April 2019, though, Jet Airways, which had a fleet of more than 100 aircraft, grounded its operations. Despite this, scheduled operators added about 20 aircraft to their fleets until March 2020, which meant an addition of about 160-240 jobs. However, the DGCA had issued about 821 new licences in this period.And then Covid-19 hit. In FY20, India's passenger traffic was 341 million. In FY21, though, it had crashed by 66%, according to statistics from the Airports Authority of India. Indian airlines have since them introduced a variety of measures to stave off losses, including job cuts, paycuts and leaves without pay. Pilots already employed, though, haven’t lost their jobs so far. But hiring is slow, to say the least, and even those who have gotten offer letters two years ago haven’t been able to fly yet. Vistara said it has reinstated salaries of all junior and mid-level staff this April, including reversing a 10% paycut taken by pilots, said Deepa Chadha, senior vice president, HR and Corporate Affairs, Vistara. Chadha said that the company had frozen hiring when the coronavirus-related pandemics hit last year, and has since started hiring “carefully” for business-critical roles and key replacements. Market leader IndiGo which in July 2020 had announced that it would be laying off 10% of its staff (which did not include pilots), has since started hiring pilots in its cadet training programme. The company had also announced paycuts of 38% and 28%, respectively, for senior management and others, respectively, and those continue to be in force.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/3ARM1TG